The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Secure-computing devices often employ encryption mechanisms for communicating and storing data. Typically, data is stored to a media drive, such as a hard-disk drive or solid-state drive having self-encryption capabilities. These self-encrypting media drives typically contain encryption keys for encrypting and decrypting the data accessed by the secure-computing device. Once the encryption keys are loaded during provisioning of the media drive, the keys can be stored by the media drive until the end of life of the media drive. At the end of life of a media drive (e.g., due to component failure or expiration of a specified service life), the encryption keys are typically cleared from the media drive or the media drive is destroyed to ensure that any remaining data within the media drive cannot be accessed by an unauthorized entity. Clearing the encryption keys, however, may not be possible when a controller or link component of the media drive fails, in which case, the media drive itself must be destroyed. The process of physically destroying a media drive can be extremely expensive and time consuming, as stringent security protocols often require the use of costly equipment and strict supervision of the process to ensure complete destruction of the media drive.